Airedale NHS FT delay EPR go-live for further safety testing

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust told Digital Health News that it has pushed back the go-live date for its Oracle Health electronic patient record (EPR) system to allow further testing to ensure it is safe and efficient.

In a statement published on its website, the trust said: “Our aim was to introduce our new EPR in September 2024. This date has now been changed to November 2024.

“This date has been reviewed to ensure that when the EPR goes live it is safe and efficient. We would never introduce a new system unless we are confident that it will be safe.”

The Oracle Health Millennium EPR is able to store more in-depth clinical information on patients in one place, referred to as a ‘single source of truth’.

David Crampsey, deputy chief executive at Airedale NHS FT and chair of the Electronic Patient Record Transformation Assurance Group, said: “We have been working alongside our technical supplier, Oracle Health, as well as a wide range of stakeholders to ensure the EPR system meets our functionality requirements and that we have a robust system in place.

“We have moved the go-live date for the new system to enable our technical teams to incorporate the developments based on stakeholder feedback and allow for further testing.

“The comprehensive testing element of the programme ensures that the system is as safe as possible and will mean a smoother transition for both patients and staff”.

He added that the new EPR is “a significant digital transformation project” for the trust, which will enable it to further improve the quality of services for our patients and streamline clinical processes for staff.

“It also forms part of the trust’s digital ambitions to harness technology to transform the way we provide care to patients and develop the right foundations for a digital NHS,” Crampsey said.

A spokesperson for the trust told Digital Health News that stakeholder feedback will come out of training sessions in which staff members are identifying areas that they need changing or amending as part of the normal build, test, fix and retest development and delivery cycle to deploy an EPR.

“There are no specific safety concerns per se, it is about ensuring that any changes are thoroughly tested and that we are in as good a position as possible to go live,” they added.

Once implemented, the EPR will allow all hospital staff at the trust who are directly involved with a patient’s care to have some level of access to the system.

Clinicians will be expected to update it every time they deliver care so that it is a real time record that will keep patients safe.

In August 2024, Digital Health News reported that Airedale NHS Foundation Trust is one of six NHS trusts in the north of England to go live with “digitised pathology departments” underpinned by the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC).

The NPIC digital pathology system went live in April 2024 within the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT), a collaborative of six NHS trusts serving three million people in West Yorkshire and Harrogate.